When you lie down with Jack Roeser and his funded enterprises you get the kind of garbage Petey is running on his Republicans for Family Values web site now. He’s attacking a suburban candidate and office holder for having an affair with two different men over the years. (no link–story mentioned by Capitol Fax).

The story below? About Mark Kirk allegedly being gay.

But it’s Andy Martin who is a scumbag. It must be that because Jack Roeser and Petey Labarera are perfectly acceptable sources for stories for many news outlets in Illinois. But if Andy Martin says something he gets condemned.

Of course Andy Martin should be condemned and largely ignored–he’s a loon. The question is why are the people he’s citing in his commercials not being treated as loons? Or people who have been running this rumor for months trying to derail Kirk and now another candidate?

To be clear, most of the Republicans I know including the socially conservatives think Petey is an asshole and nutjob. But he’s still gets plenty of press because he has a point of view to include-even if much of it is based on rumor and innuendo. Will we hear Pat Brady now denounce Jack Roeser and Petey for their dirty politics–or will he sit back and pretend it’s only the Andy Martin’s who are a problem?

Hynes is up with African Americans 45-38, while Quinn is up amongst Hispanics 44-36. That’s interesting on both accounts. Obviously Tom Hynes’ campaign against Washington has been discussed to death, but Quinn has had a pretty rock relationship with Latino legislators. Amongst whites they are tied.

Ideologically, Quinn is up only 44-40 amongst liberals which should be where he picks up a big portion of his votes. Hynes does better with women and Quinn with men.

I think the most telling number is in Quinn’s favorability amongst Democrats though. He has 38 percent approval and 38 percent disapproval. That’s pretty tough to fix and could likely be toxic in a general election.

Quinn’s strongest base is with the elderly where he leads Hynes by 10.

In the GOP race for Governor, most fascinating is that the conservatives are split relatively evenly between the candidates. For all of the ideological battling, there isn’t anyone running away with that group of voters. While conservatives have certainly gained in the Illinois Republican Party ideologically, they are hardly a homogeneous group. To me, this is why the Tea Parties are far less effective in Illinois than places like Misery.

Quinn hasn’t had an effective response yet to the furlough program or the Washington ad so I have to imagine he’ll continue slipping. I couldn’t catch the debate from last night so I can’t analyze its impact, though one has to think not many undecideds at this point are listening to a debate.

Dillard is up 2 points on McKenna with Brady close behind. While Brady might try and say this is a good result, he has little money and if he hasn’t built up a reservoir of support, he doesn’t have the money to hit undecideds with last minute messages. It certainly looks like this is shaping up as a race between Dillard and McKenna though I wouldn’t count out Jim Ryan either.

The Senate numbers show Kirk maintaining a huge lead and Hughes dramatically underperforming. Giannoulias is up 12 on Hoffman and 14 on Jackson. Hoffman may start to realize running a general election campaign in a Democratic primary wasn’t the wisest move.

Pat Brady, the Chairman of the Illinois Republican Party, says the anti-Mark Kirk element within the GOP is ‘fringe.’

That’s actually not quite true and is precisely why so many conservatives in Illinois don’t like Brady or Kirk — they feel repeated disrespected and treated as fringe.

In fact, considering how active the Illinois Tea Party movement is in opposing Kirk, Brady is, in effect, calling all of those activists fringe. He might want to be careful.

Conservatives across the country are seriously considering a last minute air-drop of support into Illinois for Pat Hughes. The thinking goes that the last minute effort to help Scott Brown put him over the finish line and the same could be done in these last eleven days before the Illinois GOP primary.

If conservatives come out early next week in an organized fashion, throw a pile of targeted money into Illinois, and rapidly drive up Pat Hughes’ name identification, the polling in Illinois suggests Hughes will win.

He is not polling well against Kirk right now, but then he has significantly lower name identification. All the polling suggests Kirk’s support is very week and once people find out about Hughes, they break overwhelmingly for Hughes.

It’ll be interesting to see if it is game on for Hughes in Illinois. We’ll see what conservatives do come Monday or Tuesday of this week.

Two weeks out is a bit late to decide to throw a pile of targeted money at the race. But, by all means do so and then consider helping out the Constitution Party in the general…..

According to documents Brown’s staff provided, nearly $23,000 was spent last year from the employee appreciation fund, accumulated with jeans days’ contributions, to pay for an the annual appreciation dinner held at a union hall. She provided an overall accounting, canceled checks and bank account statements.

More than $29,000 was spent on an annual picnic. Expenses included more than $13,000 spent on raffle tickets and prizes, and more than $9,000 on “sr. staff game supplies.”

She also provided checks indicating $11,814 was donated to charitable causes, including money to help employee Marie Norred after a fire at her home and $8,961 for the American Hearth Association.

But she conceded she could not produce records for other jeans days that are approved for various departments within her office. Brown said at least 22 jeans days were held last year.

So the money largely went to two events in the office and then some very worthy causes including the employee who lost her home. Excellent.

In addition to Hynes’ attack ads, Quinn also has been targeted by McKenna, the most prolific advertiser on the Republican side. McKenna’s ad blitz helped him achieve support from 19 percent of Republican voters compared to 18 percent for Elmhurst’s Ryan and 14 percent for Dillard, of Hinsdale.

Another 9 percent backed state Sen. Bill Brady of Bloomington, while Hinsdale transparency advocate Adam Andrzejewski had 7 percent and Chicago political pundit Dan Proft had 6 percent. Another 17 percent were undecided in the survey of 592 likely Republican primary voters.

DuPage County Board Chairman Bob Schillerstrom of Naperville, who had 2 percent support in the survey, dropped out of the race Friday and announced he’s backing Ryan.

It looks like the top three anyone would have guessed at the beginning are pretty much the top three now. With all of the undecideds, late advertising and any ground game the candidates might have will be the difference. My guess is it guess now would be that it goes down to McKenna and Dillard in a race to see who blows it in the end. Ryan is relatively short on money and hasn’t provided a clear case for himself which is too bad. Brady might have an outside shot if he can clean up downstate, but it looks like Dillard is making decent inroads there.

And for the record, while I enjoy tormenting Proft, I give him credit for going all in–that takes some balls. And it provides me endless entertainment.

Among Democrats, Quinn’s better than 2-to-1 lead over Hynes in a Tribune survey six weeks ago has evaporated amid concerns about the unelected incumbent’s ability to handle the job. The poll of 601 likely Democratic voters showed Quinn with 44 percent and Hynes with 40 percent — within the survey’s 4 percentage point error margin. Thirteen percent of the voters were undecided.

Hynes’ surge was dramatic, given the command Quinn held in early December. At that point, Quinn’s job approval rating was 58 percent, 46 percent supported his efforts to repair the state budget and he held a 49-23 advantage over Hynes, the three-term state comptroller.

Rich reports that Alexi’s poll has the race at 46-44. All of this is before the Washington ad has gotten play and Quinn is stuck on the story now given he hasn’t effectively rebutted it. His campaign sent out a press release today (I’ll add it after the jump, but it only downloaded on my other computer) that said Washington asked him for his resignation and cited a news story. That was a mistake because it reinforces the story more than anything and it looks like Quinn’s campaign is trying to throw anything at it–and they are.

It’s really hard to imagine how Washington D.C. makes you stupid enough to think that any sort of alternative goes anywhere without having the Senate bill form the basic framework. We can fix all sorts of things through reconciliation or other vehicles, but splitting bills up won’t work — it simply increases the number of moving parts– and starting over puts Democrats in the position as looking like incompetent boobs. Which they would be. Pass the bill, fix what you can, and slam it down on Republicans who opposed it and use i to build for the next election.

Ultimately, 10 percent unemployment is the problem and more time spent whining about what you didn’t get on health care does no one any good who isn’t a Republican political operative.

Brown, who’s seeking a promotion to County Board president, recently told the Tribune that all the money collected either goes to charities or into a fund that pays for an annual employee appreciation awards ceremony.

“It’s a voluntary thing,” said Brown, noting the jeans practice is not held every Friday. “If they want to do it, fine, because blue jeans is not our attire, and you have to have on a tag saying I’m wearing blue jeans because…But they want to wear blue jeans and not pay — is that what it is?”

Coughing up cash for jeans days, however, isn’t the only example of Brown raising money for pet causes from workers in her office, which has more than 2,100 employees.

Brown has raised tens of thousands of dollars from employees for her Friends of Dorothy Brown campaign fund.

In addition, many top-level employees have helped organize annual birthday parties that double as fundraisers. Brown has accepted cash gifts and other presents from employees at those birthday parties and on Christmas — a practice she halted after the Tribune asked her about it.

“The stories that come out of that office are in some ways little ones, but they just keep coming,” said Cindi Canary, executive director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform.

Some of the best news of the week is that Toni Perwinkle has pulled into a pretty substantial lead for the Cook County President’s race. Even better, Todd Stroger is in the running to compete with former Saint Louis Mayor Clarence Harmon as the incumbent to do the worst in a campaign for reelection. Stroger is polling at 11 percent while Harmon came in around 8 percent. That’s something to shoot for.

You got all angry at Andy Martin for claiming there is a rumor that Mark Kirk is gay, but yet, you haven’t said anything about the continuing effort by Jack Roeser and his minions to make that a public issue.

So why isn’t there outrage at the actual guy spreading the rumor? And continuing to do so?

Ibendahl just did it again on the 19th with all sorts of gay innuendo and an explicit reference to it.

So where’s the outrage Pat Brady?

Or better yet, Illinois press corps–where’s the outrage? Just because Andy Martin said something and is offensive doesn’t mean that he’s alone. He took the rumor from a major funder or right wing politics in Illinois. If Andy Martin gets the attention, why isn’t Jack Roeser’s continuing crusade against teh gay?

It’s not just some anti-semitic loon who runs every cycle, it’s a guy who funds lots of GOP politics and yet no one can talk about it because it’s not nice and all based on rumors.

And it’s true, it is all based on rumors, but that begs the question why is the Republican Party so beholden to morons like Roeser that they won’t denounce him for the same behavior?